Life Lines: Desistance, Social Relations and Reciprocity

• In Event: Response, Rehabilitation, and Reconciliation: The Normative Dimensions of the Offender’s Desistance Journey

Abstract

This paper draws on the life stories of a friendship group of men in their 40s who offended together in their youth and early adulthood. By exploring these inter-related narratives, it reveals the individual, relational and structural contributions to the desistance process, drawing on Donati’s (2010) relational sociology. In examining these men’s social relations, this paper reveals the central role of friendship groups, intimate relationships, families of formation, employment and religious communities in change over the life course. It shows how, for different individuals, these relations triggered reflexive evaluation of their priorities, behaviors and lifestyles but with differing results. Despite these differences, however, the common theme of these distinct stories is that desistance from crime was a means of realizing and maintaining the men’s individual and relational concerns, with which continued offending became (sometimes incrementally) incompatible. The paper concludes that work to support desistance must extend far beyond the traditional concerns of correctional practice and into a deeper engagement with means and processes that enable the (re)connection of the individual to social networks that are restorative and allow people to fulfil the reciprocal obligations on which networks and communities depend.

Authors

• Elizabeth Weaver, University of Strathclyde

• Fergus McNeill, University of Glasgow